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The Past Comes Calling

That accident with Dick and Skip was one that would give you nightmares and make you drunk thinking about it. No doubt it was a horrible, horrible thing for them to go through because they had to be aware of what was happening, that they were running out of time.
—— one of the Wildrake divers during interview

Over the many years it took me to write this book, I have often been asked why I wanted to write about an incident that happened so long ago. To answer that question one has to look back in time.

In August 1979 I was on board a construction barge called the Balder when I first heard about the Wildrake accident. Having just arrived in the North Sea three months earlier, I was new to the industry. In fact I had no working dives in my log book and therefore no way to evaluate the ordeal that Richard Walker and Skip Guiel had gone through. Bell diving to 500 feet was still a mystery to me, and when the sad announcement came, it came with no details, only that the bell had been lost and when it was finally recovered, the two divers inside were found dead.

In the months and years that followed, I did not read any newspaper articles or reports about the accident. Nor did I discuss it with any of the people involved. What happened to the Wildrake divers had to be pushed to one side in order for me to get on with the demands of becoming a diver in the North Sea.

The next time I came across the word Wildrake was in 1983. I was in a boarding house in Aberdeen when I read a small article in the local newspaper about Richard's widow receiving an award in damages for the death of her husband. The amount left me stunned. It didn't seem like much money for a life and I wondered how this mother of a young daughter had coped with the tragedy. It was a fleeting thought. Once again I pushed the accident to the back of my mind and went on with my career.

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